“…the state DEQ is just as perplexed by Edwards’ results as he seems to be by the City’s test results. When I said we were unsure how the Virginia Tech team got its results, that’s not the same as being surprised that they got them. …this group specializes in looking for high lead problems. They pull that rabbit out of that hat everywhere they go. Nobody should be surprised when the rabbit comes out of the hat, even if they can’t figure out how it is done…..while the state appreciates academic participation in this discussion, offering broad, dire public health advice based on some quick testing could be seen as fanning political flames irresponsibly. Residents of Flint concerned about the health of their community don’t need more of that.”

Given MDEQ’s insistence that there is absolutely nothing wrong with Flint water, we have created a timeline that illustrates how MDEQ’s mistakes and deception created the Flint Water Crisis in the first place. Our analysis relies on e-mails and documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the American Civil Liberties Union-Michigan (ACLU of Michigan) and FlintWaterStudy.org.

All FOIA documents are provided at the end of this article for review.

Phase 1. MDEQ Fails to Require Corrosion Control for Flint River Water (April 2014)

Effective July 1998, the federal Lead and Copper Rule (LCR) has required that all large public water systems maintain a program to control levels of lead in drinking water from corrosion. Moreover, the law also requires the City of Flint to have a state approved plan, with enforceable regulatory limits for “Water Quality Parameters” including pH, alkalinity and/or corrosion inhibitor dose measured in the water distribution system.

As a direct result of this mistake, Flint residents have been completely unprotected from elevated lead in water from the moment the switch to Flint River water was made. This has created a conflict of interest for MDEQ ever since. Specifically, MDEQ’s failure to require a corrosion control program is what created the Flint water crisis in the first place–they now have a vested interest in covering up the problem.

Even if we assume MDEQ was confused about its obligations under the LCR, when problems with high lead started to crop up in February 2015, they should have quickly acted to correct the mistake. Samples with high lead were reported at the University of Michigan-Flint Campus, and on February 26, 2015 Mike Glasgow (City of Flint) did excellent detective work discovering high lead (over 100 ppb) in water samples from Flint resident Lee-Anne Walters’ home.

Ms. Walters immediately forwarded her results to representatives of USEPA Region 5, who in turn immediately forwarded the results to Stephen Busch and Mike Prysby (MDEQ) with the subject line “HIGH LEAD: FLINT Water testing Results”The EPA e-mail correctly informed MDEQ that Ms. Walters’ high lead was likely due to “… the different chemistry water…leaching out contaminants from the insides of…the pipes.” But MDEQ denied to EPA that that Flint had a lead in water problem.
At that point, EPA Region 5 lead-in-water expert Miguel Del Toral asked MDEQ a question through another EPA employee:

“Miguel was wondering if Flint is feeding Phosphates. Flint must have Optimal Corrosion Control Treatment-is it Phosphates?”

“If I remember correctly, Detroit is feeding PO4 for the LCR, but since Flint is no longer part of that interconnection, I was wondering what their <Optimal Corrosion Control> was. They are required to have <Optimal Corrosion Control> in place which is why I was asking what they were using.”

On March 18, 2015, Lee-Anne Walters’ home was retested after flushing her system thoroughly. This time the test result came back even worse with 397 ppb lead– almost 40 times higher than the World Health Organization 10 ppb safety threshold. EPA Region 5 forwarded the results to MDEQ, with a query “Any thoughts on how to respond to her? I’m running out of ideas.”

MDEQ’s response, delivered in a voicemail to Del Toral on March 19, 2015, stated that MDEQ had investigated and found Ms. Walters’ high lead was due to lead sources in her plumbing. On March 27, 2015, Walters’ son, who had been having health problems, was tested for lead in his blood. The blood lead results came back high– well over the 5 ug/dL CDC threshold of concern.

Phase 3. Walters and Del Toral Investigate the Veracity of MDEQ Statements (April to June 2015)

With good reason, Lee-Anne Walters did not accept the MDEQ’s explanation to Del Toral for the high lead in her water. The internal plumbing had been stolen from the house before it was purchased, and they had installed new (lead free) plastic plumbing before moving in.

Walters also checked up on the MDEQ statement that Flint had “an Optimized Corrosion Control Program.” She called the City of Flint, and city officials correctly informed her that there was no program at all.

Walters then passed this alarming information along to EPA’s Del Toral, who on April 23rd e-mailed MDEQ, and again asked what corrosion control program Flint was using. It was only then that MDEQ finally acknowledged that there was NO program. Concerned due to the very high occurrence of lead service lines (LSLs) in Flint, on April 27th Del Toral wrote an EPA Region 5 internal e-mail stating:

“Flint has not been operating any corrosion control treatment, which is very concerning given the likelihood of LSLs in the City.”

That night Del Toral also stopped at Walters’ house on a trip north, and personally inspected her plumbing first hand. He confirmed it was plastic and lead-free. Del Toral also dropped off sample bottles at the Walters’ home, and told her that if she wanted an analysis to contact Professor Marc Edwards (the author of this article and Principal Investigator of FlintWaterStudy.org) at Virginia Tech.

The next morning Edwards talked Walters through an intensive 30 bottle sampling protocol. When the bottles were returned to Virginia Tech and analyzed, Edwards and his senior research scientist Dr. Jeff Parks were stunned by the results. The average lead in was 2,429 ppb lead, the high was 13,200 ppb, and even after 25 minutes flushing the water never dropped below 200 ppb. After Walters told Del Toral about the high lead results, he drove back to Flint, just in time to observe the City replacing the service line to Walters’ home. He personally collected a sample of the pipe and verified it to be pure lead.

In a follow-up memo dated June 24, 2015, which was sent to both Walters and Edwards, Del Toral outlined numerous concerns about the situation regarding the serious lead corrosion problem in Flint. He included a clear recommendation that the USEPA investigate whether the City of Flint was in compliance with federal laws for lead corrosion control.

> “Revising” the Original LCR Report. In spite of all the problems documented with lead in Flint water from February to June 2015, Flint and MDEQ took a lackadaisical approach to the federally required LCR sampling program. Specifically, just 5 days before the June 30th deadline to collect the 100 samples that MDEQ required, the City had only collected 39 samples.

Adam Rosenthal (MDEQ) e-mailed Mike Glasgow at the City of Flint:

“We hope you have 61 more lead/copper samples collected and sent to the lab by 6/30/15, and that they will be below the AL for lead. As of now with 39 results, Flint’s 90th percentile is over the AL for lead.”

In the next five days the City collected 30 samples, all of which were below the action level, and did not reach the 100 sample target. If all 71 collected samples were counted, the City would have exceeded the 15 ppb action level. Federal law would then require that Flint residents be provided information about how to protect themselves and their children from lead in water. MDEQ’s failure to install corrosion control would have been flagged as an obvious mistake. But none of that happened.

Instead, the MDEQ “revised” the City’s original LCR report, invalidating two high lead results, and as a result the 90%’ile was under the 15 ppb action level. But validity of the samples that had low lead in Flint’s water was never questioned. This is a problem, because the City has now admitted that they do not know which homes had lead pipe, even though it is stated in writing in the report that all sampled homes had lead pipe. By law, at least 50 percent of the homes sampled must be verified to have lead pipe, and the remainder of homes sampled must have been built before 1986 and known to have lead solder. There is no basis for believing that this requirement was met in either the 2014 or 2015 LCR sampling events conducted by the City. Hence, the City of Flint has not had a valid LCR sampling event since the switch to Flint River water.

MDEQ then lowered the minimum number of required samples from 100 to 60, making it look like the City of Flint had met their target. MDEQ also did not question the City’s open acknowledgement that homes from 2014 had not been re-sampled, or that high risk (Tier 1) sites were not used. The original report, due July 10th, was also late by several weeks. All of these violations of federal law were glossed over, to make it appear that the City had passed its lead testing with flying colors. Just like that, according to MDEQ at least, the City of Flint had no LCR violations at all.

> ACLU-Michigan FOIA. The timing by which the “revised” LCR report was created, is also of interest. On July 22, 2015, the ACLU-Michigan submitted a FOIA to MDEQ, requesting the City of Flint’s LCR report supposedly due on July 10, 2015. The City’s original LCR report with all the obvious problems dated July 28, 2015 was late as mentioned earlier. But MDEQ never provided the ACLU-Michigan with the original LCR report. Instead, they created a scrubbed revised report on August 20, 2015, and sent that report to ALCU-Michigan (from the City of Flint) the next day. In the comments section of the report, Flint openly states “Revised report after conference call with DEQ staff. Two samples were removed from list for not meeting sample criteria, and due to population the number of samples was reduced to 60.”

> MDEQ to FlintWaterStudy FOIA: What conference call? On September 9, 2015, Virginia Tech submitted a FOIA to MDEQ explicitly requesting records and minutes of the conference call between DEQ staff and Flint cited in the revised LCR report. This FOIA request has been denied by MDEQ, because “Your request does not include the date/time of the conference call and who from the Department of Environmental Quality participated on the conference call.” FlintWaterStudy immediately appealed the withholding of documents related to the conference call to the State of Michigan. On September 28th, our appeal was denied. If we do not like the decision, the State says our only recourse is to initiate a lawsuit.

> Handling Miguel Del Toral. MDEQ obviously had a major problem on its hands with EPA’s lead-in-water expert Miguel Del Toral. On August 4th 2015, Lee-Anne Walters and Melissa Mays met with MDEQ officials to discuss Flint’s lead in water problems. The MDEQ officials participating in the meeting were identified by Mays and Walters, as Liane Shekter-Smith (Chief of the Office of Drinking Water and Municipal Assistance), Stephen Busch and Brad Wurfel.

According to Walters and Mays, Shekter-Smith bragged that“Mr. Del Toral has been handled,” and that Flint residents would not be hearing from him again. Moreover, MDEQ asserted that Mr. Del Toral’s interim memo detailing the many problems with Flint’s (non-existent) corrosion control program “would never be finalized.”Just yesterday, NPR released a slightly different, but enlightening version of Wurfel’s take on Del Toral and the memo:

MDEQ spokesman Brad Wurfel says the report was the work of a “rogue employee,” and promised the final report — not yet released — would tell a much different story.

Mays and Walters vividly recall Wurfel, smirking and laughing, whenever they expressed concern about elevated lead in Flint’s water. Looking back on the exchange yesterday, Mays stated “It is shocking how their refusal to admit they made a mistake, trumped the dangers their actions pose to Flint’s children.”

Angered, Lee-Anne Walters then called Edwards, and informed him that Del Toral would no longer be working on Flint water issues, and the two discussed the clear implication that EPA bureaucrats had intervened to prevent Del Toral from further exposing MDEQ’s numerous blunders and the health threat to Flint residents. She further stated that “It is too late for my son, but I will not stand by and let this happen to another other innocent child in Flint.”

Clearly, the MDEQ, City of Flint and even the USEPA (with the obvious exception of Del Toral) have proved themselves unworthy of the public trust. Flint residents have been left to fend for themselves, when it comes to dealing with the dangers of high lead in their water.

FlintWaterStudy was launched an hour after the phone call from Ms. Walters, to help the citizens of Flint deal with the lead-in-water crisis that MDEQ created, and to correct false statements from uncaring agencies that have left Flint’s children in harm’s way.

31 thoughts on “COMMENTARY: MDEQ Mistakes and Deception Created the Flint Water Crisis”

The MDEQ is rife with corruption. Rogue Employee?! BS!! I guarantee this employee is one of the few who are doing their job and trying to protect Michigan’s Citizens. Brad Wurfel is lying as is Liane Schecter.
Employees who speak out are harassed mercilessly and even worse as in my case. When I did not voluntarily retire MDEQ Jon E. Russell conspired to fabricate a case to get rid of me!! I took a polygraph from Forensic Polygraph Services (Mr. Neil Myers) to prove I was telling the truth but Michigan’s corrupt Attorney General Bill Schuette and his equally corrupt Assistant AG Joseph Yung-Kung Ho (P-77390) have denied me any measure of Justice!! It is not a coincidence that the Judge involved with my case Thomas Wilson Jackson County Michigan used to work for the AG’s Office. Everything was filed in a timely manner!! The MDEQ have even refused my receiving copies of my OWN PERSONNEL FILE! This is Michigan’s way of saying “Thanks for 30 years of Service”

[…] nothing MDEQ says should be believed. First, Flint residents had to determine on their own that MDEQ’s written assertion of “optimal corrosion control” was false, after children’s blood lead was elevated from drinking the water. When confronted, […]

[…] issues of accountability in the Flint water crisis are “relatively complex” considering what we and ACLU-Michigan have uncovered, we at least hope to see a speedy resolution to this “public health emergency” in the […]

[…] While it is true that no one gets up in the morning intending to lead poison children, we previously argued that the agencies who created the Flint drinking water crisis worked awfully hard covering up their incompetence and F… […]

[…] In 2004, Dr. Marc Edwards was invited to work in Lansing by Virg Bernero, after the water utility had been caught cheating on their Lead and Copper Rule monitoring requirements. By manipulating the sampling, a failing lead in water report had been turned into a passing one. Sound familiar? […]

[…] In 2004, FLINTWATERSTUDY’s Dr. Marc Edwards was asked by (then MI State Senator) Virg Bernero to assist on a lead-in-water problem in Lansing, MI. The city’s water utility had been caught cheating on their Lead and Copper Rule monitoring requirements by manipulating the sampling — their failing lead-in-water report grade was changed into a passing grade. Sound familiar? […]

[…] In 2004, FLINTWATERSTUDY’s Dr. Marc Edwards was asked by (then MI State Senator) Virg Bernero to assist on a lead-in-water problem in Lansing, MI. The city’s water utility had been caught cheating on their Lead and Copper Rule monitoring requirements by manipulating the sampling — their failing lead-in-water report grade was changed into a passing grade. Sound familiar? […]

[…] without any lead plumbing, and b) involved a sampling protocol known to underestimate lead release, the 71 samples that the City of Flint submitted to MDEQ still failed to meet the LCR. The reason Flint’s water was declared in compliance with federal standards was because MDEQ took […]

[…] any lead plumbing, and b) involved a sampling protocol known to underestimate lead release, the 71 samples that the City of Flint submitted to MDEQ still failed to meet the LCR. The reason Flint’s water was declared in compliance with federal standards was because MDEQ took […]

[…] public. Often this need is of an urgent nature, as was shown by the 2014 Ebola breakout, the 2015 lead in water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and climate change. In such instances, members of the public need life-saving information as […]

[…] Of course, to our knowledge MDEQ has never acknowledged that Flint water was unsafe in the first place, and they continue to illustrate their complete ignorance of the problem by blaming every high lead result on bad plumbing. This is an extension of their prior argument that the high lead in Ms. Walters’ home was the fault of her plumbing, which later proved false because EPA found her pipes were all plastic. […]

[…] other words, Dykema and DHHS started out their investigation with demonstrably false MDEQ talking points as assumptions. Nonetheless, a team of researchers proceeded to examine their data for possible increased […]

[…] Fact: MDEQ violated the letter and spirit of the Federal Lead and Copper Rule in at least 3 different way… On the heels of excellent reporting by ACLU-Michigan, the City of Flint itself acknowledges it did not sample enough of the required homes with lead pipe. Simply put, Flint has not had a legal EPA water lead sampling event since switching to Flint River (and possibly even before that). […]

[…] of FOIA requests would be filed by not only the Michigan ACLU, but also by a politician and other organizations. Although MDEQ attempted to cover it all up the results from the answered FOIA’s as well as the […]

[…] group specializes in looking for high lead problems,” Wurfel, the MDEQ spokesman, reportedly told a local journalist. “They pull that rabbit out of that hat everywhere they go. Nobody should be […]

[…] Against federal guidelines, they chose not to require the Flint water plant to use optimized corrosion control, despite telling the Environmental Protection Agency they were doing so in an email on Feb. 27, 2015. […]

[…] guidelines, they chose not to require the Flint water plant to use optimized corrosion control, despite telling the Environmental Protection Agency they were doing so in an e-mail on Feb. 27, 2015” (Barry-Jester). It took until October for a Public Health Emergency to be issued by the […]

[…] Against federal guidelines, they chose not to require the Flint water plant to use optimized corrosion control, despite telling the Environmental Protection Agency they were doing so in an email on Feb. 27, 2015. […]

I would like to get to the issue of any connection between the attitudes of Liane Shekter-Smith, Stephan Busch and Brad Wurfel as employees under MDEQ Director Dan Wyant and his boss governor Rick Snyder. Are these “rogue” employees or were they all put in positions of authority because of their willingness to see through Wyant’s or Snyder’s vision of what the MDEQ mission should be in service to the state of Michigan stakeholders, business community and also the citizenry.

In December, on the day Wyant and Wurfel resigned, the Snyder Flint Water Advisory Task Force reported that the DEQ bears primary responsibility for what happened in Flint. They told Snyder that the Office of Drinking Water’s “Minimalist approach to regulatory and oversight responsibility is unacceptable and simply insufficient to the task of public protection.” I submit these damning words strongly suggest that the culture inculcated throughout the state government when Snyder took office lay the responsibility for all that followed at the feet of Governor Snyder.

[…] Recall the date when MDEQ falsely stated to EPA that there was “optimal corrosion control” in Fl… Thus, two weeks after that false statement, MDEQ did not volunteer the critical information about the lack of corrosion control to Jim Henry (GCHD). Even though it is very likely the cause of higher legionella. […]

I needed to write you a very small remark in order to thank you so much as before over the extraordinary principles you have shared at this time. This is quite remarkably generous of you to allow freely what exactly a lot of folks would’ve distributed for an e-book to get some dough for themselves, specifically since you might have done it in case you decided. Those basics in addition worked like the good way to know that some people have a similar keenness like my personal own to see a good deal more with respect to this condition. I am certain there are numerous more enjoyable periods ahead for folks who look over your blog.

Flintwaterinfo.com

FlintWaterStudy Research Support Fundraiser

“Thank you to all 1,663 donors who supported our fundraising campaign and helped us recover some of our Flint cost! We will use this for similar work in the future. Donors -- we will send you a private note of Thank You as well." - The Virginia Tech Flint Team

Fundraising Campaign to buy lead filters for Flint residents

We thank the 68 generous contributors who helped raise $4,345 through our SafeWater4Flint fundraising campaign.The funds have been donated to the United Way of Genesee County who are spearheading filter distribution in Flint. You can donate directly to United Way on their donation page here.